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topic that relate to your audience’s pecific interests, knowledge and experience, you can ensure communi- cations success. When you’ve mastered the 4 Rs, you will be able to successfully present he most complex or technical topic to any audience. By doing it right, you’ll win over your audience, achieve success for your speech’s purpose, and your communication techniques will be invisible for a grateful audience. Now, can you spot how I used the 4 Rs to create this article?
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Replace: Like the Sun Piercing
through a Cloudy Sky
Technical jargon provides a direct line
to the MEGO syndrome. To present
a topic full of complex terms or concepts, it’s often helpful to replace some
of these terms with metaphors. There
are multiple types of metaphors that
range from similes (“nanodevices are
like miniature robots”) to full allegorical discussions (“imagine an army
of doctors working inside your body
to cure your ailments”). By replacing jargon and complex concepts with
metaphors, you can communicate
complex and technical topics to almost
any audience.
Be creative. You don’t have to use
hackneyed metaphors and imagery.
The key is focusing on the audience.
You can look to literature or music
for something especially poetic. But
if you can create metaphors for your
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Barry C. Collin is the Director of Analysis of the non-profit, non-partisan Markets Institute and the CEO of Moddition, Inc. A thought leader, speaker
and writer in complex business, economic,
sociological and technical issues, his work
has been cited or chronicled in over 50
current books and in hundreds of papers
globally. He can be reached at barry.collin@
marketsinstitute.org.
Be
Th
and does not expect revelations
on the topic. It’s why you’re there
and what you do best.